Am J Psychiatry 1985; 142:1478-1481
Copyright © 1985 by American Psychiatric Association
A brief test for measuring malingering in schizophrenic individuals
RJ Beaber, A Marston, J Michelli and MJ Mills
The M Test, a brief test for measuring malingering of schizophrenic
illness, contains true-false items describing actual symptoms of
schizophrenia, bizarre attitudes and beliefs, and fake symptoms. Normal
subjects rarely endorsed any of the items. The responses of genuinely ill
schizophrenic inpatients were compared with those of normal subjects who
had been asked to fake malingering after being educated about the symptoms
of schizophrenia and forewarned about the purpose of the test. The test
significantly discriminated between genuinely ill patients and malingerers.
The test correctly identified 87.3% of the schizophrenic subjects and 78.2%
of the malingering normal subjects.
